Before we go out to reach unbelievers, to invite them to our homes, to contact them with the purpose of bringing them to the Lord, we must have a definite dealing with the Lord. This dealing is of two aspects. First, we must deal with our sins and worldliness and consecrate ourselves to the Lord again for the purpose of gospel preaching. If we sincerely mean our consecration, the Lord will point out our sins and worldliness. Then we will need to deal with these things and make a thorough confession. We will tell the Lord that we give up all the things that He condemns. To deal with the sins and worldliness that the Lord points out to us is the real consecration.
Second, this kind of consecration is for power. After we consecrate in this way and gladly deal with all our sins and worldliness, we must claim the power from on high. We should not pay much attention to our experience, feelings, or the so-called manifestations of power. We should leave experience, feelings, and manifestation in the hands of the Lord and simply claim the power from on high by faith. We must not care whether or not we have tongues of fire upon us or other phenomena. Rather, we must simply consecrate ourselves to the Lord, be willing to deal with all the things He condemns, and claim His power by faith. Otherwise, we will not be prevailing.
When we claim the power from on high by faith, we will have authority. Many times I have asked people who claim to have the Pentecostal experience where their power is. They may say that their speaking in tongues is genuine, but where is the power? We must have the power. If we do not have power, we need to doubt our experience. I have seen and experienced to some extent that the only prevailing way to exercise the power from on high is to consecrate ourselves and claim the power. Then we may not have one bit of manifestation, but we will have the power, even if we cannot sense it. This power can be realized only by our consecration, our willingness to deal with whatever the Lord condemns, and our claiming of the power by faith.
We cannot have this kind of dealing once for all. Whenever we go to contact people, even twice a day, morning and evening, we must consecrate ourselves and claim the power from on high. Before 1949 I did much work of preaching. In north China at every New Year, we had a four-day gospel campaign. About a hundred people were brought in through those four days. The preaching of the church was truly prevailing and powerful. I would always give the message, and the church would care for the other matters. The whole church shared the burden. In those days I did nothing but pray, “Lord, here I am. Empower me. Whatever You condemn, I condemn too.” Then I claimed the power by faith. I cannot tell you what kind of power we had! That preaching was truly powerful. If you had been there, you would have seen the power. The meetings were prevailing. Even the unbelievers in the market and on the street would say that no one could come into our building without being struck down, not physically but by the spiritual power. One could sense the power there. By this experience, I learned that whenever we go to contact people, we have to pray. In those years we did much work of visitation for those unbelievers who came to attend the gospel meeting. Whenever we did this kind of work, we needed to pray definitely, consecrate ourselves to the Lord, deal with the things which the Lord condemned, and then claim the power from on high. What I am speaking is a training, not merely a message. If we do not take these things and put them into practice, we will get nothing.
The third practical point for reaching unbelievers is that when we go to contact people, we should speak things not merely according to our memory but by contacting the Lord. In our gospel preaching we must learn to speak not by what we know or by what we decide to say. Rather, we should keep ourselves open, and while we are speaking, we should fellowship with the Lord to speak living words according to the inner guidance. We also do not need to keep a good order when we speak. We can never help people to be saved merely by keeping an orderly speaking. This is the way of the lecturer, professor, or teacher in a classroom.
When we contact people to preach the gospel, our speaking may jump around. Once when I was preaching from the platform, I suddenly pointed to a young student and said, “You stole chalk from the school.” That had nothing to do with my message. However, the boy later testified that he had actually done such a thing. When I spoke in this way, he was surprised and told himself that it did not mean anything. Then I said, “You are saying that this does not mean anything.” I continued, “You brought the chalk home and drew circles on the floor.” This was exactly what he had done. That young boy was trembling, and he was saved. His mother was one of the deaconesses in the church. The next morning when I went into the deacon’s office, she was there. She was very glad, saying, “Brother Lee, that was a real miracle. How did you know he stole chalk from the school? How did you know that he said to himself that it meant nothing, and how did you know that he brought the chalk home and drew circles on the floor?” I do not know how I knew. That was simply my preaching. This illustrates that when we go to preach the gospel to people, we should forget about mere doctrine and a good order in our speaking.
Learn to do this. It is not an easy matter. Watchman Nee said, “We always like to keep our message and forget about souls. We must realize that we are sent by the Lord to save souls, not to save our message.” This is one hundred percent right. However, many times in our preaching we save our message and keep it in a good sequence. Then people may say that our message is nice, but they will go to hell. It is not a matter of a nice message; it is a matter of the saving power.
In our speaking we need the living word. My older sister, who worked for the Lord, told me about Dr. John Sun. When he was preaching the gospel to a large congregation in the middle of China, the heartland, to a crowd of one thousand people, he suddenly pointed to a young lady in the crowd and said, “You are a concubine.” That was the first time this young lady had come to hear Christian preaching. She was thoroughly offended, but in actuality she was a concubine. The Holy Spirit convicted and convinced her by that speaking, and she came to the Lord. I can give many stories like this to illustrate how we must learn to speak with people about the gospel in a living way, not according to mere knowledge and doctrine.